Report: Obama to Release Oil from Strategic Reserve

RUSH: Obama has just announced that the United States and Britain are going to release oil from their Strategic Reserves. I didn't even know that Cameron was up for reelection. I did not know that he was up for reelection. That's why Obama's doing this. This is going to have absolutely no impact whatsoever. It is a purely political move from the guy who says, "We can't drill. We can't drill fast enough, can't drill soon enough." What does that mean? If we can't drill what it means is putting more oil on the market isn't gonna matter anything. Besides, if we drill we can't put any oil on the market for two-to-three years so we're going to deplete the Strategic Oil Reserve.

We don't have an emergency. There is not a shortage. We are exporting gasoline. Do you know that, folks? We are a net exporter now of gasoline. As you go to the pump and you see the price rise, we have a net-exporting-of-gasoline position now. Part of this is due to refining capacity around the world and a number of other things. There's not an oil shortage. There's not a crisis. This is simply a flailing attempt to try to get the price down. If you're gonna do this, do this in October, not now. Folks, I'm gonna tell you something. Doing this now, releasing oil from our Strategic Reserve is a sign, I think, of pure panic. I think the truth of the matter is the left is in a state of panic.

Those two polls, the New York Times and the Washington Post this week, have shaken them to their core. None of this is playing out the way it was supposed to. They had a big state dinner last night for David Cameron, and I've got a different take on this. You might have seen the guest list. It was filled with Hollywood types and people that have connections to Great Britain. There were 34 Obama fundraisers at this state dinner. Bundlers. People who have either donated or raised, a combination of the two, a minimum of $500,000. Thirty-four of these people. It was a campaign event. Now, it was not a state dinner per say.

They called it that but technically it was not a state dinner because Cameron's not the head of state. The Queen is. So this has to be called something else, "an official dinner." For his sake they called it a state dinner even though it really wasn't. But they used this guy, purely and simply, as an Obama campaign moment, as an election ploy. And releasing oil from the Strategic Reserve is nothing more than theater. Releasing oil is not even a short-term solution. All it really means is that we're gonna have to refill the Strategic Reserves at a much higher price. This is an action that is going to cost us money. Not that anybody in the regime cares about that.

The purpose of the Strategic Oil Reserve is to provide the nation an emergency capacity. We don't have an emergency, other than Obama's reelection is in trouble. That's the emergency! There is no shortage of oil. The emergency is the price of gasoline going up and the toll that is taking on Obama's approval numbers. That's the emergency. And even something that's set aside for national security -- and that's what the Strategic Oil Reserve is for. It is not for this. I realize this audience has grown (and almost doubled here this week, potentially) with all that's going on, and I imagine some of you who are new to the program are not in context here.

Well, you can't possibly be in context here if you're just joining us today or this week, and we've been at it for 23 years. But the Strategic Oil Reserve does not exist to lower gasoline prices. That's not its purpose. The Strategic Reserve is so we have a supply of oil when this nation is cut off, or is being threatened with a cutoff of imported oil, or when there is a genuine shortage. And when our national security depends on it. This is nothing more than a cheap political ploy that's gonna end up costing money because the oil is gonna have to replenished. But there's not enough in the Strategic Reserves to last long enough.

If it's all refined as gasoline, by the way, there's still not enough of it to last long enough to have any kind of permanent, meaningful impact on the price of gasoline.

The Strategic Reserve was created by Jimmy Carter after the OPEC Oil Embargo in the late seventies. That was when. And, by the way, that shortage was contrived. There is not a shortage of oil on this planet. There is not a shortage of oil anywhere. Whenever there are shortages, they are contrived and are the result of distribution channels being locked down, shipping lanes being closed, or production being shut down in oil-producing countries. But there is no shortage of oil. There's no shortage of oil now.

We are not having any supply cut off, other than Obama refusing to drill and Obama refusing to authorize the Keystone pipeline. The one man standing in the way of an increased supply of oil in this country is Barack Obama! And so now he's gonna release oil from the Strategic Reserves because they say it's supposed to lower prices. And the media is gonna be right in here, folks. The media is gonna be jumping for joy with this and doing exactly what they're supposed to do. The news is going to be, "Obama cares! He's not waiting for the oil companies. Somebody has to act! Somebody has to care about the American people. Somebody has to care about the price of gasoline! They say that presidents can't do anything about it."

That's what's gonna get reported here. Don't get depressed. Don't get dispirited. What we have here is the opposite: You ought to be jumping for joy. And I'm not kidding you. There is a state of panic going on in the White House over a number of things. Their fundraising? Karl Rove's column today in the Wall Street Journal says their fundraising is abysmal. I was telling somebody the other day. I may have mentioned it on the radio program the other day. If we had a media that was as suspicious of Democrats as it is of Republicans -- if we had a media that was curious, if we had a media that was as interested in holding Democrats accountable when they're in power as they are Republicans -- I can't tell you what difference that would make in terms the kind of country we had.

The attitude, the overall attitude of the population of this country would be profoundly different. Now, we don't have that kind of media. We have a propaganda-, agenda-oriented media, and that's just the way it is. And I'm just telling you that this Strategic Reserve release is the result of panic. It's "strategic" in the sense that for a week we've been told, "The president can't do anything about the price of oil." But now The One has had enough of the suffering! By the way, at the state dinner last night they wouldn't even announce the kinds of wine because of how expensive they are. I'm not kidding. And it's not the first time. It's not the first time for Obama not to announce the names of the wine.

Normally at these state dinners you use American wines. There are occasions where some fine Bordeaux, French wines have been used. But it is an honor for the winemaker to be chosen, and it is an honor to be publicized that his wine or her wine was chosen for a big dinner at the White House. Obama is not announcing which wines because they're expensive. Maybe $300, $400 a bottle. And he can't have that while gas price are going up. He can't have the appearance of Obama partying hardy while people continue to lose jobs and so forth. So they have to not announce (and not for the first time) the kinds of wine that are being used. So we'll explore in greater detail, ladies and gentlemen, this whole thing, what I think is the actual mind-set of the White House and the Obama reelect people right now.

If you're gonna do this, if you're gonna release oil from the Strategic Reserve -- and, by the way, I don't care how incompetent they are and how economically ignorant they are. They know that this is not going to affect the price of gasoline, not for the long term, and not significantly. And if it does... It never has before. This is the thing. Because it's not enough oil compared to the total amount of oil refined into gasoline this country uses every day. The Strategic Reserve is like a thimble compared to the daily or weekly use of oil in this country. So they know this. So the price had better come down somehow. They had better be able to point somewhere where the prices come down.

Or maybe they're just gonna try to live off the fact that "Somebody finally had to do something for the struggling American people, fighting against Big Oil, attempting to rape and rip off average Americans who are already in challenging economic times!" So Obama is hero again. Democrats as saviors! They create a bunch of victims and ride to the rescue as the savior and so forth. Again, folks, this Strategic Reserve is supposed to be used to help us survive an interruption of our oil supply -- which we could have, by the way, if the Iranians closed down the Strait of Hormuz, but they haven't. They're not gonna do that today. There is no interruption. We are not having any problem getting oil other than the obstacles Obama has put in the way of the free flow of oil at market prices, refusing to drill here and the failure to okay the Keystone pipeline.

RUSH: I had not intended to talk about this at all today. This was not at the top of the stack. But when I heard that Obama... And he's out where, Prince George's County today? Yeah, he's at Prince George's Community College in Largo, Maryland, and he's just spewing a bunch of drivel and bilge about gasoline prices and energy and so forth. And then he announces the release of the Strategic Reserve. So we gotta deal with it as it happens. Now, speaking of gasoline prices, Senator Dick Lugar (Republican-Indiana) pointed something out in an editorial in The Politico today. This is a stunning statistic.

"Every 10% increase in oil prices is expected to knock 0.25% off economic growth..." That, if true, is an amazing fact, especially when you bear in mind that we've had gasoline prices go up more than 100% under Obama. That works out to a reduction of GDP by 2.5%, and our GDP is not even growing at 2%. Our GDP, our economy is growing at under 2%, and the federal government's share of the total economic output of this (which does not include economic output; they don't produce anything) is 23%, on its way eventually to 25%. It is at a historical high. That's how much of the private sector that Obama and the Democrats have simply transferred and shut down and moved to the government sector.

And that's why there are two million fewer jobs. So you had this statistic from Lugar: Every 10% increase in oil prices is expected to knock a quarter of a percentage point off economic growth. Well, you run the numbers: The oil price is up over 100% under Obama, and gross domestic product is down by 2.5%. Think of how much this has cost the country. Think of how much it has cost you and me, and how much it's going to cost the economy if Obama doesn't do something about it. Which he could very easily do, but not this way. Not releasing the Strategic Reserve. He did that before.

You may not remember, but back in June, Obama released 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Reserves because of the Arab Spring. Back in June, did that make the world price of oil go down? I don't think so. There's not enough. Thirty million barrels is a thimble compared to the daily usage of oil by everybody on the planet. Here are the numbers: "The world consumes 87.5 million barrels of oil a day. The United States alone consumes about 19 million barrels a day," and this is all according to a guy named Tom Kloza, the Chief Oil Analyst at the Oil Price Information Service. "As of February 29th of this year, the inventory of the Strategic Reserves was 695.9 million barrels. That equates to 36 days' supply of oil at current daily consumption levels of 19 million barrels a day.

"But the most that has ever been released from the Strategic Reserve ever was the 30 million barrels [Obama] released last June during the Arab spring," and now if you jump forward from June of last year to today, did the release of oil from the Strategic Reserves have any lasting meaning on the price of gasoline and the price of oil? Obviously no, because it's all up. Now, I know that keeping track of numbers when people are speaking them to you is very tough to do when the numbers aren't in front of you. But let me do it one more time:

There's not enough oil there to bring down the price of oil or bring down the price of gas.

Grab audio sound bite number 29. Let's just play this. I knew this would happen. Cookie sends me this sound bite at a commercial break. Here's Obama in Largo, Maryland, at Prince George's Community College just this morning.

OBAMA: The question is: How do we meet this challenge because right now we're startin' to see a lot of politicians talking a lot --

RUSH: Oh, yeah, right on! By the way, the godlike reverb is back. Did you notice that? Obama is a god. What he's saying is, "Okay, everybody is talking; nobody's doing anything. Nobody's doing anything about the price of gasoline. Well, I'm going to!"

Thirty million barrels. I don't know how much he's gonna release. It was 30 million barrels last June. So when this release does not bring the price of gasoline down, what will the Democrats say then? I have a pretty good guess what they'll say.

They'll say, "See? See? The prices are fixed!" Or they will say, "Big Oil is sabotaging the courageous efforts of our courageous president. Big, Evil Oil. Yep, that's right! Big Oil is price fixing. They're seeing to it that our young, brave president is not helped by this courageous move."

That has to be what they're gonna say because it's not gonna lower the price of gasoline. Not significantly or for any real length of time. We're not talking about enough oil here.

RUSH: Now, the last time around when Obama released oil from the Strategic Reserve (that was last June) gasoline prices, oil prices did go down for a couple of weeks. But they rebounded and were higher again by July, less than a month later. I have this from CNBC, July 5, 2011. The headline: "Oil Prices Climb Back to Pre-Reserve Release Levels -- Crude raced higher Tuesday as energy bulls pushed Nymex oil back toward the $100-a-barrel mark, prices last seen before world governments said they would release crude from their reserves last month." So it's a spot move. It's a temporary move. It's a move oriented in panic. It is political, and it's based on the fact that Obama is seeking political gain 'cause everybody is saying, "Presidents cannot do anything about price of gasoline."

Obama himself said it this week and last, and members of his administration have said, "There's really nothing the president can do."

And we've remarked on that because these same people upbraided George W. Bush for years for not doing anything about the price of gasoline. Now, the National Journal has it exactly right. They just put up an article with this headline: "Obama's Energy Speech in Maryland Showed He's in Full Crisis-Control Mode on Gas Prices." Let's go ahead and play some of the sound bites from this appearance today. National Journal is part of the State-Controlled Media. National Journal is The Hotline. National Journal is run and operated out of the White House, for all intents and purposes, when the Democrats are there. That's a remarkable headline: "Obama's Energy Speech in Maryland Showed He's in Full Crisis-Control Mode on Gas Prices."

We've got four sound bites. This is the first. We're starting at audio sound bite 25. I gotta make sure the broadcast engineer can keep up with me. Here we go.

OBAMA: Every time prices start to go up, especially in an election year, politicians dust off their three-point plans for $2 gas. I guess this year they decided we're gonna make it 2.50. I don't know where... Uh, why not 2.40? Why not 2.10? But they -- they tell the same story. They head down to the gas station, they make sure a few cameras are followin' 'em, and then they start actin' like, "We've got a magic wand, and we will give you cheap gas forever if you just elect us." Every time! Been the same script for 30 years. It's like a bad rerun.

RUSH: National Journal's right. He's in panic over this. I must ask you: Which Republican candidate...? A little pop quiz. Which Republican candidate is assuring everybody that he can get the price down to $2.50 a gallon? You don't know? It's Newt! That's exact right! It's Newt, who's not gonna get the nomination. Here's Obama reacting to Newt. Newt's out there saying he's gonna get the price of gasoline down to $2.50. So when Obama goes out and makes this speech to try to knock this one back, then it must bother him. He must think that there's traction.

RUSH: People in the know realize Barack Obama is the number one obstacle to cheap energy in this country. Don't doubt me. Here's our second sound bite, Obama in Largo, Maryland.

OBAMA: Do not tell me that we're not drilling. We're drilling all over this country. I mean, I guess there's -- there are a few spots where we're not drilling. We're not drilling in the National Mall. We're not drilling at your house. All right? I -- I guess we could try t'have like, you know, 200 oil rigs in the middle of Chesapeake Bay. Well, that's the question. We are drilling at a record pace, but we're doing so in a way that protects the health and safety and the natural resources of the American people.

OBAMA: A'right, s-s-so that's point number one. If you start hearin' this "Drill, baby, drill! Drill, drill, drill!" -- if you start hearin' that again -- just remember you've got the facts. We're doin' that.

RUSH: I tell you, that's a goldmine. That is another example of the panic that the White House is experiencing. Here is a guy who has personally placed a drilling moratorium throughout the Gulf of Mexico, who will not permit drilling in Alaska, who will not okay the Keystone pipeline, which is not even drilling! That's just pipelining oil. That doesn't even involve drilling. The oil that's being drilled in this country is under leases granted by George W. Bush and previous presidents. The oil production taking place in this country is taking place on privately owned land, not government-owned land where Obama is not permitting any drilling.

For those of you new to the program, I genuinely do want to persuade you. I've got a golden opportunity here. I don't want to say things here that are gonna make you scratch your heads or say, "Nah, that can't be true," but I don't know how to say this. When he says, "Do not tell me we're not drilling. We're drilling all over this country," his policy has been to shut down as much drilling as possible. The only place he can't shut down drilling is that which is occurring on privately owned land in America, like land that might be owned by an oil company or an individual entrepreneur, a wildcatter who is drilling his own oil. But he most definitely has shut down drilling, and he has refused new permits for drilling -- and up until this sound bite, he's out there explaining why.

"Well, we've only got 2% of the world's reserves; it doesn't make sense to drill."

Now all of a sudden, in a state of panic, he wants to tell people how he's Mr. Drill? He is all over the ballpark each and every day saying whatever he has to say in reaction to a crisis that is engulfing him. This is a classic example, and it's so un-presidential. This is so childish and immature. (impression) "We're not drilling in National Mall. We're not drillin' your house! I guess we could set up a couple rigs in the Chesapeake Bay." Nobody's talking about doing that. Nobody wants to drill on the National Mall. Nobody wants to drill in Chesapeake Bay. Nobody's suggesting this. It's a classic Obama technique of setting up a straw man: You know, an imaginary troll out there, an imaginary evil guy, an imaginary evil party, an imaginary evil radio host.

The number one obstacle to the free flow of oil at market prices in this country is Barack Obama himself and by virtue of his own policies. We're drilling at a record pace? We're not drilling at a record place. We are drilling on lands he doesn't control, and we've been drilling in ways that protect the health and safety of natural resources for 35 or 40 or more years. I remember as a kid, nine or ten years old watching the NFL at home in Missouri, and I see a Texaco commercial. The Texaco commercial was all about how they're protecting deer in Texas. And this is in the sixties! The Texaco commercial wasn't about how much oil and how great they are at it, and how much gasoline's out there.

No, even back in the sixties the oil companies were running commercials to tell the American people that what they were doing was clean and safe and so forth. This is nothing new. This is nothing new. And again if you're new to the program, for 30 years the Democrats have been saying, "Ah, we can't drill. Drilling's not the answer. It's gonna take two to three years." Thirty years ago, two to three years is today. Thirty years ago, two to three years is now. Thirty years ago, look at all the oil we would have -- and, by the way, in the stack that I have for the rest of the program is a shocking story on just how much oil we do have in this country. It's perhaps... The oil that's now retrievable, known to exist and retrievable, puts us on a par with Saudi Arabia. We do not have a shortage of oil.

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, note, too -- back now to Obama -- he has to go to a community college to make these claims on energy. He doesn't go to an audience of adults. He goes to a community college. While I have you here, let me remind you of something else. Do you remember a guy by the name of Judge Feldman?

Some of you may remember it. Obama has been cited as being in contempt of court because of his refusal to issue permits to drill for oil in the Gulf. This story's from last February 21st, 2011. "A federal court ordered the Obama administration Thursday to act on five deep water drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico within 30 days, calling the delays in issuing new decisions 'unreasonable, unacceptable, and unjustified.' In a case brought by the drilling company Ensco, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana Judge Martin Feldman ruled that the four to nine months the company has waited for a decision on the permits it has a stake in is simply too long."

A lot of oil companies, after the BP oil spill, asked to go back in and start drilling. Obama would not grant the permits. And a federal judge cited the Obama administration as being in contempt of court because of its refusal to issue permits. Then this judge (I think it was this judge), after issuing his decision, Ken Salazar, the secretary of energy, the cowboy-hat guy, basically said, "To hell with the judge! We're just gonna ignore this. To heck with it." So I'm telling you -- and there's nothing in it for me to make it up, and there's nothing in it for me to be wrong. I don't know how that benefits me or anybody, actually. Some people live off being wrong, but it doesn't help me to be. The idea that Barack Obama is Mr. Drill? The idea that Mr. Obama is our last, best hope of getting oil finally circulating sufficiently to reduce price is an absolute lie. It is Barack Obama standing in the way of new drilling, and he has been for a year on these permits. It is just what it is. It's nothing more than, nothing less. And what he's telling these college kids is simply untrue. I don't know how else to say it. It's simply not true. Blatantly not true.

RUSH: Well, now there's a lot of confusion out there over whether or not there will be a release from the US Strategic Oil Reserves. The press secretary, Jay Carney, says that that's false, that there will be no release. But TheHill.com, the National Journal and Reuters disagree. In fact, Reuters is running an exclusive, which says: "US, Britain Will Release Emergency Oil Stocks." So now there's rampant confusion. And there's confusion in the oil markets because the oil markets started to react to the news that there was gonna be a release from the Strategic Reserves. But a couple of journalists have tweeted that the White House press secretary says, "No, no, no, no! These reports are all false." But these stories that I have here (particularly from TheHill.com and Reuters) are lengthy.

Let me give you some of the details here from the Reuters exclusive. "US, Britain Will Release Emergency Oil Stocks -- Britain has decided to cooperate with the United States in a bilateral agreement to release strategic oil stocks, two British sources said, in an effort to prevent high fuel prices derailing economic growth in a election year," i.e., to help Obama's reelection efforts. "A formal request from the United States to the UK to join forces in a release of oil from government-controlled reserves is expected 'shortly' following a meeting on Wednesday in Washington between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron, who discussed the issue, one source said.

"Britain would respond positively, the two sources said." Buried in this Reuters piece: "Details of the timing, volume and duration of the emergency drawdown have yet to be settled but a detailed agreement is expected by the summer, one of the sources said." So according to the Reuters story, it indeed sounds like the deal is to do this release closer to the elections, which makes it even more cynical. I thought it was odd that they would release oil now, because it's a purely political move designed to help Obama's reelection, and it's March. Why do it now? And so buried in that piece at Reuters, "Details of the timing, volume and duration of the emergency drawdown have yet to be settled but a detailed agreement is expected by the summer..."

Now, in this speech that Obama gave to the college kids in Largo, Maryland, he said (impression), "There no silver bullet. There no silver bullet we can use to lower oil prices. There's no silver bullet." That's another reason for the confusion. This is not the first day he said, "There's no silver bullet. There's no magic bullet that anybody can do to lower gas prices." Yet here comes this multi-sourced story of a release from the Strategic Reserves. Now it's being denied by the White House press secretary. So there we are, folks: Rampant confusion. I guarantee you what's happened here: There is an agreement to release oil from the Strategic Reserves, if necessary, closer to the election.

The deal depends on what the price of oil and gasoline happens to be at the time. Cameron has been brought along to agree since Obama threw him a party, and the UK looks to be an ally with Obama in this. And everything's hunky-dory. So they have an agreement and they're gonna do this sometime later in the year if necessary to aid Obama's reelection. The story leaks out, it gets reported as though today this is going to happen. Now the press secretary tweets (paraphrased), "No, no, no, no! There's no deal," and there may not be a deal. The deal may not happen at all. It depends on what the gasoline and oil price is later in the summer. So that's what's happened here.

And as a result, the oil markets are kind of confused, not knowing what's real and what isn't. Obama did say, "There's no silver bullet."

White House denies U.S.-U.K. agreement on tapping oil reserves
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/03/15/white-house-denies-u-s-u-k-agreement-on-tapping-oil-reserves/
March 15, 2012 at 1:23 pm

by Puneet Kollipara

The White House has denied reports earlier Thursday that the United States and Britain agreed to cooperate on a plan to release some oil from their strategic reserves to counter rising global crude prices that have boosted gasoline prices.

Citing unnamed administration sources, Reuters reported that a formal request from the U.S. to the U.K. to join forces in releasing oil from government-controlled reserves is expected to occur “shortly,” following a meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron in Washington. Britain will agree to cooperate, a source told the news service. But White House spokesman Jay Carney, while acknowledging the two leaders discussed energy issues, shot down the report as inaccurate.

“It is inaccurate, as was reported today, that any kind of agreement was reached on a course of action or that any kind of timetable associated with a course of action was agreed to,” Carney told a news briefing.

Obama has faced political pressure from Republicans and his Democratic allies in Congress to do something to address gasoline prices — even though analysts attribute the rise mostly to higher oil prices brought on by Middle East tensions and note that presidents and lawmakers have little power to address pump prices in the short term.

Republicans have called for more oil-and-gas drilling, but analysts have said such measures wouldn’t have any short-term impact on the price of oil, the major determinant of what consumers pay at the pump. Meanwhile Democratic lawmakers including Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, have pressed Obama to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a 700-million-barrel emergency stockpile along the Gulf Coast.

Sarah Emerson, president of Energy Security Analysis Inc., a research firm, has said the petroleum reserve is meant for use in supply emergencies, and not as a price-smoothing tool.

More recently, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., sounded an optimistic note upon news that Saudi Arabia had said it would boost its production to offset decreases in Iranian supplies. “It is the best news on a very bad front … and let us hope it brings together some good news,” Schumer said.

Republicans argue that the U.S. should develop its own resources, not rely on foreign oil from the volatile Middle East.

Obama has gone on a speaking blitz in the United States recently, trying to defend his administration’s record on oil and gas production while characterizing GOP drilling proposals as an election-year “bumper sticker” that wouldn’t help reduce oil prices right now. He has said a balanced approach involving, oil, gas, as well as renewables and efficiency improvements to cut U.S. oil use, stands the best chance of reducing the nation’s vulnerability to the whims of global crude-oil markets.

He has noted that U.S. oil production has steadily risen and net imports have declined.

“So do not tell me that we’re not drilling. We’re drilling all over this country,” Obama said in Largo, Md., at a speech on energy.

The liberal Center for American Progress and environmental activists have cited that point as evidence that increasing domestic production hasn’t lowered and won’t lower oil prices in the short term at the very least.

Republicans say U.S. oil output has increased in spite of Obama, that he has pushed policies that impede production on the federal lands and waters and that he should do more to promote drilling. They also have pushed him to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which many environmentalists and Democrats oppose and which he has declined to approve pending a necessary additional environmental review.

Republican legislation to approve the oil-sands crude pipeline from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries, open a part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and new offshore waters for drilling and require commercial oil-shale leases failed in the Democratic-held Senate this week and last week. The GOP-controlled House passed an energy bill with those measures in February, but it was dead on arrival in the upper chamber.

“Clearly, if we opened up more domestic production and bought oil from Canada and created 3 million barrels that we don’t have today, people would see that as a positive sign,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Energy Secretary Steven Chu at a hearing on Capitol Hill.

Obama said Thursday that his administration has leased millions of acres already and will continue auctioning off areas in the Gulf of Mexico for drilling. But he has pushed back against Republican demands that he allow drilling in a massive swath of new waters and federal lands, reiterating his longtime argument that the country cannot drill its way to lower gas prices.

“I guess there are a few spots where we aren’t drilling. We’re not drilling in the National Mall,” he joked at a speech in Largo, Md. “We’re not drilling at your house. I guess we could try to have like, you know, 200 oil rigs in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay.”

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